Made in Japan

U.S. Baseball's Talent Grab

By

John Krich

Updated March 20, 2009 11:59 p.m. ET

Every Japanese fan can rattle off the country's starting lineup in the World Baseball Classic.

During the Asia Round, played early this month in Japan, tens of thousands chanted in martial unison as their heroes came to bat: "I-chi-ro!...Joh-ji-ma!...O-ga-sa-wa-ra!" In the concrete entrails of the Tokyo Dome, packs of paparazzi waited hours to pounce for a single snapshot or explanation of a swing from a star of Team Japan, champions of baseball's first attempt at a global tournament, back to defend the title won three years ago.

But the off-the-field contest between the two most powerful ball-playing nations -- Japan and the U.S. -- is a subject that Japanese league administrators and team management, local liaisons, players' union representatives and tournament officials prefer to discuss without being named.

Future Japanese Exports?

That's because the World Baseball Classic, billed as a springboard for further spreading the reach of America's "national pastime" is viewed by suspicious insiders as something else: a fishing expedition and trial expansion by Major League Baseball, the U.S. organizer of the event. One Japanese sports professor and team adviser wonders aloud whether the tournament "is for showing the best of baseball to the world -- or just making it easier for scouting the best that can be brought to America?" After all, the crowds chanting for Ichiro -- Ichiro Suzuki -- don't see much of him in the flesh; he's played in the U.S. since 2001.

The games showcase a coming generation of Japanese stars, led by Yu Darvish, a handsome half-Iranian pitcher with the potential to become the poster boy for global baseball. But it's a generation increasingly unhinged from the traditional loyalties that have helped tie player to team in Japan. And some within the Japanese league's management are privately concerned that in a tug-of-war over transnational talent, their side lacks pull.

"To some, the Pacific Ocean is an ocean, but to others it is just a small stream that's easy to cross," says one long-time operations manager for the NPB, Japan's top league, standing before a stadium refreshment stand offering hot dogs and peanuts alongside rice crackers and bento lunch boxes. "The window dressing of the Baseball Classic -- what Japanese call tatamae -- is one thing, the reality another."

How Geopolitics Imitates Baseball

As Asia's four baseball powers met in the first round of this year's World Classic, their relative positions seemed to mirror real-world conditions.

Proud Japan, ravaged by economic stagnation, was determined to remain top dog, even if that meant relying on players who have been sold off or fled to greener (in dollars) pastures. South Korea, ever in its rival's shadow, its economic and hitting clout both perennially underestimated, trotted out its usual squad of oversize no-names&mdash;who also happen to be reigning Olympic baseball champions.

"In terms of team unity and fighting spirit," says Japanese sportswriter Hideaki Yonezawa, "the Koreans are more Japanese than we are."

Taiwan (forced to wear "Chinese Taipei" uniforms), where politics have been rocked by corruption charges against a once-popular president, has suffered two game-fixing scandals since 1997, destroying its baseball league and a generation of players. It was a hard fall for a place with a century-long tradition in the game and a string of Little League world champions, outstanding high-school tournaments and top players (including current U.S. Major Leaguer Chien-ming Wang) to its credit. Taiwan's independent identity as an outpost of baseball is threatened by the rise of China. After the loss to its mainland rival in the Olympics, Taiwan's defeat in the tournament led to island-wide howls of shame and calls for a more-coordinated program to develop ballplayers.

"We see nothing wrong with baseball competition improving in the two Chinas," says Lin Hua-wei, manager of Taiwan's 2006 World Baseball Classic team, putting the best face on the situation. As for mainland China, despite a struggling pro league and short baseball history, it will undoubtedly continue to attract Major League investment in youth development. Like so many other industries, baseball sees China as its most promising opportunity for global expansion.

Even Bobby Valentine, with a foot in both camps -- now the popular manager of Japan's Lotte Marines; previously the manager of the last New York Mets team to reach the World Series -- sees the baseball cultures clashing. "There has to be a way to connect the two parts of the world with the best ballplayers, fans and infrastructure," he says, "but I don't know if it will happen in my lifetime."

The World Baseball Classic is a big deal in Japan; this year's tournament offered an opportunity to repeat the shock victory of 2006 and prove the country belongs at the top of the sport. The first round began March 5; the tournament ends Monday.

"We want to win not just for our country but to show that the Japanese style of playing, which is very detailed and precise, can be an example for the world," declares slugger Seichi Uchikawa. That Japanese way of baseball, with its stress on things like moving runners and hitting the cut-off man -- that is, selflessness and discipline -- won praise even from the Cuban team's fan No. 1, Fidel Castro. El Comandante was rooting for Japan, at least to finish second.

"I would like our victory...to be achieved while confronting that team of great technical expertise," Mr. Castro wrote in a newspaper commentary on the Classic. That was before the Japanese shut down his Cubans, 6-0, in a second-round game in San Diego; at press time the two were playing again to determine which would go on to Saturday's semifinals.

The enthusiasm generated in Japan by the last Classic carried over into the summer season of the Japanese leagues, which can use the boost. The sport has been losing attendance in recent years as J-league soccer has been rising.

What's been big in U.S. baseball in recent years is the impact of Japanese players, which has gone beyond anything long-time baseball hands predicted. Even after seeing how pioneer pitcher Hideo Nomo sparked marketing "Nomomania" when he bolted to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995, few saw Mr. Suzuki coming. Allowed under current rules to seek free agency only after playing nine years in Japan, he came to the Seattle Mariners in 2001 and quickly won his league's Most Valuable Player award. A few seasons later, he broke a storied Major League record -- for hits in a season -- that had stood since 1920. He has made the All-Star team every year.

Hideki "Godzilla" Matsui (prevented by a knee injury from playing for his country this year) sparked a Japanese tourism and merchandising boom in New York after he joined the Yankees in 2003. Then two years ago pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka -- celebrated for his "gyroball" -- set off a bidding war won by the Boston Red Sox with a payout of nearly $100 million. There are expected to be 16 players of Japanese origin in the Major Leagues this season, the most ever, with an equal number in the U.S. minor leagues.

ENLARGE

Chien-ming Wang of Taiwan

They could all soon be put in shade by Mr. Darvish, a 22-year-old fireballer who has blazed a path through Japan's high-school championships and top leagues. With his lanky good looks and brash style -- and recent marriage to an actress (at the time, already pregnant with his child) -- he's like nothing Japan has seen before, as much a pop-culture idol as an athletic one.

"He looks more like Sting, more like a soccer player," says former player Kazuhiro Sasaki. Mr. Valentine compares him with another international star: "He could even be a Tiger Woods figure if he's marketed right."

That the mixed-heritage Mr. Darvish has been accepted so readily may be the most remarkable fact about him, at least to those who remember Japan's reputation for being closed and homogenous. "This is a society where once you prove yourself, you earn respect -- that goes over all barriers," says his father, Farzad Darvishsefad, who runs an Osaka gallery that sells Iranian arts and crafts and who sees himself as an ambassador of Iranian culture in Japan.

Japan's rising star might not have been raised there at all had it not been for the hostage crisis at Tehran's U.S. Embassy that started in 1979. Mr. Darvishsefad, the son of a travel agent, left Iran for the U.S. as a 17-year-old aspiring soccer player and met his Japanese wife-to-be when they attended the same college in Florida. They moved to Japan, but he expected to spend only two years there before returning to the U.S. to get a Ph.D. -- until the rupture in U.S.-Iran relations led him to worry about increasing hostility there.

The son, having spent his life trying to prove how Japanese he is, has publicly declared that he wants to stay and break pitching records in his father's adopted country. But U.S. scouts are already drooling over his potential, and even Mr. Darvishsefad says, "if he ever decides to go, and take a new challenge, I don't think a few people leaving can hurt the baseball culture of an entire country."

Remarkably, most Japanese fans seem to agree. So far, there has been little public clamor about the defection of stars to the U.S. Their performances, followed in detail on nightly television recaps and an increasing number of live broadcasts, fuel national pride more than a sense of loss. But what if players begin to jump ship en masse, lured not merely by the mystique of higher-level competition, but U.S. salaries? They average $3 million a year, about five times the average in Japan. (Recently, Japanese teams have at least unofficially loosened rules controlling players' income from marketing and endorsements.)

The onerous length of service before free agency is granted has served to keep most players in Japan for the bulk of their careers. Rules are being eased for players seeking to change teams within Japan, with free agency now granted after eight years (soon to be seven). But there is no sign the NPB is relenting on speeding foreign transfers.

If player and team agree, a player can be "posted" before the nine years is up -- essentially, sold at auction to the highest U.S. bidder. And given the bids for Mr. Matsuzaka in 2007, many observers believe more Japanese teams will go for the money, though some note that a period of economic contraction is a bad time to "get addicted" to big U.S. payouts. And Yomiuri, the publishing giant whose Giants team still dominates revenues and publicity for the Japanese league, has decried selling off the country's best players as succumbing to the "dark side." Says one consultant, "For them, it's a Samurai thing."

A further crack in Japan's player-control system appeared just this year when Junichi Tazawa, a high-school star left undrafted by the Japanese leagues, decided to offer himself directly to the Boston Red Sox. Japanese owners want to ban such renegades from returning to play in Japan for two or three years; a spokesman for the players' union says that this is still being contested.

Some observers argue that cultural factors will keep Japanese prospects from jumping in huge numbers. "Unlike poor Latin Americans, the Japanese won't be as motivated to endure the hardships of the U.S. minor leagues, the language and food problems, when they can have cushy jobs playing for Japanese company teams," said one adviser.

"They always write about the success stories, but not the many failures," says the retired reliever Mr. Sasaki, who was American League Rookie of the Year in the U.S. in 2000 but walked away from $8.5 million to return to Japan after four years. Expressing opinions spoken by many older players, he says, "The ways of thinking are changing, even the ways of practicing -- more weight training and American methods. But I don't believe players leaving after high school, or being posted, are good news for them, the leagues or the country."

ENLARGE

Hideo Nomo in 1995, newly arrived in the U.S. and about to spark 'Nomomania'

A younger generation may not share this view, reflecting larger changes in Japan, where the "womb-to-tomb" employment system has collapsed. Says Robert Whiting, whose books about the Japanese game include "You Gotta Have Wa," Japanese baseball "is getting more Americanized, and the old time when a company had a player's unquestioned loyalty for life is dead as a doornail."

Young players themselves tend to stick to safe remarks on the subject. "We can access more information about the U.S. and make better decisions now," says Team Japan standout Mr. Uchikawa. They're more comfortable with softball questions. Asked why all the younger players seem to dye their hair golden, he jokes, "Maybe that's our only advantage."

An unprecedented players' strike in 2004, triggered by the collapse of one franchise, has brought some changes to the Japanese side. A younger generation of owners from information-technology companies such as Softbank and Rakuten are said to be more open to change. But relations between players and owners -- where the union operates merely as a "buffer," according to its spokesman -- still work by mutual consensus rather than a formal, U.S.-style collective-bargaining agreement.

And the American and Japanese leagues continue to operate under opposite business models. Where Major League teams are mostly toys for rich individuals, Japanese teams are more often tiny divisions of huge holding companies, administered by executives without baseball expertise and used more to advertise brands than to earn revenue. (In the U.S., one exception to individual ownership is the Seattle Mariners -- owned by Japan's Nintendo.) Where U.S. teams have high payrolls but often get local-government help with stadium costs, Japanese teams pay big money for facilities but relatively small amounts for personnel. While the American leagues draft hundreds of players every year in hopes of developing a few, the Japanese pick just the cream of an annual crop from a vast feeding system of serious high-school baseball programs.

"Our teams have to be run more intelligently and openly," says one Japanese team adviser. "And we have to retain more of our star players if we expect fans to keep paying up to $200 for a ticket."

Could the solution to Japan's talent drain come in some eventual absorption of the Japanese leagues into the U.S. Major Leagues? Some baseball insiders see signs of this in the successful staging of the Classic. Other positive signs include recent "working agreements" between Japanese and U.S. teams.

Alternatively, Japanese owners might add franchises in South Korea, Taiwan and China, creating a wider, all-Asia league stocked with international players. "That would be a dream come true," says Lotte Marines' manager Mr. Valentine.

But the NPB operations manager doesn't necessarily see that as a reason to change how Japanese baseball does business. "Even when players leave, we've got 4,000 high schools producing more ever year," he says. "And even if we don't make a cent from the World Baseball Classic, it helps people forget their troubles and it gets more kids to dream about playing baseball."

As the Classic headed toward Monday's championship game in Los Angeles, no country was watching more intently than Japan. The defending champions appeared to face long odds, even if they got past Cuba again: The other teams in the finals are Korea -- which secured a berth with a 4-1 win over Japan, roughing up Mr. Darvish -- a determined U.S. squad and slugger-stocked Venezuela. But the Japanese team seemed to have a far greater chance of another championship than the rulers of global baseball have of creating a level playing field.

More than a century after its inception, baseball still waits for a genuine "World Series."

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